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“It’s nicer than I ever thought it could be. And it still runs.” She grinned.
Jesus, that grin was enough to make my heart pound.
I’d missed a lot about her for the last year, but that sly grin? That was the one thing I missed the most. Especially when it was directed at me.
That thought spiraled into another, and I lowered my voice before saying, “Did something happen at home to make you leave?”
Why did you leave me?
She swallowed, and I saw the line of her throat bob before she quietly said, “They put a hit out on me.”
I felt my entire being freeze up at her words. “They put a hit out…what?”
“A hit out. On me,” she confirmed, looking at me with her melty brown eyes. “I started getting this really weird feeling about two days before I left. I confirmed it the day I left. They hired a hit man, promised him a couple million dollars to take me out and bring ‘the kid’ to them. I followed the trail to some darknet. It’s one of those sites where the contract and the footprint disappear when the contract is taken. But I found the path that led back to the man that agreed to take me out for that exorbitant amount of money—preferably not in front of my child, it said—and Lisbeth.”
“Lisbeth specifically, not Farrell?” he asked.
I shrugged. “It said Lisbeth. But I’m sure it was both of them. How would she even know to go to that site? She’s not even smart. She cheated off of me throughout high school, and the only reason she passed was because I took her final exam for her in three classes. Trust me when I say she’s not the smartest crayon in the lunchbox.”
“I think you mean crayon box,” I teased.
She rolled her eyes, then indicated the barstool. “Sit. Are you staying for dinner?”
Of course, I was staying for dinner.
In fact, I was staying for the rest of my life if she’d let me.
We were in Mooresville, Alabama, today, and as far as I could tell, I liked the area. Accident may have had friends there, waiting on me to come back, and my office, but it didn’t have her. Them.
I had zero problems staying exactly where I was. However long she’d let me.
“And is this man still following you?” I asked.
Enraged didn’t even begin to explain how I felt about hearing someone had been hired to take her out.
“No, not that one,” she admitted. “Though I wasn’t able to get the evidence on him that showed he was willing to commit a hit for money, I was able to pin him for child porn charges. He’s in prison and will be for the foreseeable future.”
“Not that one?” I drawled.
Anger started to ignite in my veins.
“Right now, there’s still one following me. When the contract runs out, Lisbeth reinstates it all over again. So far, eight men and one woman have taken the contract. All of them I’ve been able to dispatch and get turned in to the police except for her.”
“Her?” I asked.
“She’s a ghost.” She smirked at me. “Like you. She has no online footprint at all. The only time she’s ever been on, as far as I can tell, is to take that contract. Either she’s smart as hell and knows what she’s doing and can hide herself like me…or she’s actually that antiquated and doesn’t do a single thing online that I can follow her with. She was the latest to take the contract, and I’ve been scrambling to track her, getting inventive.”
“I can help with the non-computer following of her,” I said. “Iwillhelp.”
She smiled and was about to say something, but JP came back completely changed, showered, and sat on the stool next to me.
She looked up at me with a smile as she said, “Are you staying with us tonight? We have a really sweet couch.”
The sweet couch was the size of a thimble.
But if she’d let me, I’d enjoy that thimble.
“I’ll stay on that sweet couch if you let me,” I teased.
